Why Is China Still So Obsessed with Downton Abbey, Even After That Lackluster Last Season?

While many of us Americans were left feeling less-than-satisfied by Downton Abbey’s fourth season, Chinese viewers seem to still be feverishly devouring the Julian Fellowes period drama. In fact, it is such a popular import into China—with reportedly 160 million citizens watching the series—that when Chinese premier Li Keqiang visited the U.K. recently, Prime Minister David Cameron gifted his overseas counterpart a script of Downton’s first-ever episode, autographed by Fellowes himself.

This is not the first time that we’ve heard about Downton being especially beloved in China. Last year, U.K. newspaper The Daily Expresstraced China’s cultural fascination with the British upper class, specifically as depicted on Downton Abbey.

“There is a voracious appetite for British culture because it is seen
as a status symbol of wealth and success. It used to be something
restricted to the higher echelons of Chinese society but it is
spreading rapidly,” says businessman Richard Craig, who has been
trading in China for eight years.

The nation is developing so quickly that the wealthy middle classes
that numbered about million a decade ago have now risen to 400 million
and they are all looking for badges of their new-found wealth and
status. It can be anything from watching a British TV period drama to
being a member of a whiskey club but the thirst for British symbols of
success is growing by the year. They are obsessed with the Royal
Family and I must have had more than 100 calls congratulating me on
the birth of Prince George.”

The write-up added that the series is so popular that at a Downton Abbey event hosted by the British Council in Shanghai, throngs of the “young, educated Chinese” audience “went berserk” when they were shown a photo of Maggie Smith in character as her bone-dry Dowager Countess.

The Chinese are also reportedly so fixated with the series, that in a GQ article published in May, David Katz pointed out that China has the fastest-growing market in the world for British butlers—much like Downton Abbey’s own Carson.

China now has over 1 million millionaires, with 90,000 minted just in
2012. Gary Williams, a London-based staffing agent who himself was a butler for fifteen years, credits much of China' s butler demand to
Downton Abbey. Watched by millions of Chinese, it’s one of the biggest
British TV imports ever. The show is more than just a soapy diversion,
he says; it’s a guidebook for living in a stratified society. “The
Chinese aren't even really sure what a British butler should do,” says
Williams. “It will take them ten to fifteen years to really understand
that.”

[...]

Sure, the reason for [Downton Abbey’s] popularity in China is,
largely, the same as here: It’s addictive and fun. But it also
reflects a certain Chinese enthusiasm for how Westerners handle and
display great wealth. You could even argue that Downton works as a
tidy, albeit dated, guide to the type of class-obsessed society that
Communist China spent decades resisting. The show depicts the type of
have-it-all service that the modern upper crust of China is eager to
re-create at home, which explains why Nick Bonell* is there.

Downton Abbey, however, is not the only British import that Chinese seem to be eating up these days. The Daily Express also cites “pheasant shooting, polo matches, the Royal Family, public schools and James Bond” as other glamorous British entities that have gained wild popularity in China over recent years.